


The Past Comes Back to Life

by rainforestgeek



Series: Why are you my remedy? [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Past Allura/Lance (Voltron), Season/Series 08 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22331554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainforestgeek/pseuds/rainforestgeek
Summary: Lance lost a girlfriend.Pidge lost a friend.Grieving was not the time for complicated, inappropriate feelings.Rated for language.
Relationships: Allura & Pidge | Katie Holt, Lance/Pidge | Katie Holt
Series: Why are you my remedy? [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1598608
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	The Past Comes Back to Life

Pidge hadn't cried since that fateful day. She didn't even cry at the memorial. What was wrong with her?

Lance and Hunk had both bawled, rivaled only by Coran in terms of tears shed. The memorial was a whole affair, filmed and streamed across the universe, thousands of people in attendance wearing a strange mix of pink and black. The paladins all followed the Altean tradition of wearing pink in honor of - of the dead. Their dead friend. Only Lance had abstained, clad head to toe in black.

There were too many people.

Afterwards Pidge went home. She completely disassembled her computer and put it back together. She dumped all her spare robot parts on the floor and sat in the middle of the mess, day in and day out, tinkering and experimenting. She drew piles of rough schematics. Half of them got balled up and thrown in the trash can's general vicinity. She only left her room to shower, eat, and go to the bathroom. She didn't leave the house at all.

Sleep didn't really happen. Pidge felt herself fade in and out of consciousness at times but every time she got into bed, she stayed wide awake, all alone in the silence. One night, she put on her shoes, pushed open her bedroom window and climbed onto the roof.

Sitting up here felt strange without Matt. This was their special place growing up. But she was grateful for the solitude as she gazed up at the familiar constellations that felt so alien after years in deep space. She'd gazed upon dozens of skies with the other paladins while Allura and Coran showed them the constellations they remembered.

Her throat closed up for a second.

Pidge's relationship with Allura had been shaky at times. They were just such profoundly different people. Yet, they'd been the only two girls on the ship and that almost inevitably forged a bond between them. Whoever said girls were the de facto drama queens was a filthy liar: Pidge and Allura had several times retreated to the holographic observatory to get away from the boys' melodrama (which Coran had shamelessly, if not intentionally, encouraged) and just talk about space. Or sit in silence.

_"I had a friend back on Altea," Allura confided softly. "Rora. She was the daughter of one of my father's courtiers. We used to run about the palace as children searching for secret passageways and pretending to be knights on a mission to rescue captured princes."_

_Pidge laughed a little to herself. Allura's childhood games sounded refreshingly backwards from the ones on Earth._

_Her blue eyes got sad. "Once we were older, I spent all my waking hours under my parents' and Coran's tutelage. And about a dozen other teachers grooming me to become the next queen. Every now and again Rora took me to her home to lie in the juniberries in her garden. She was..."_

_Allura trailed off. "She was like a sister?" Pidge asked carefully._

_"Rora was my sanity. A little bit of calm among the politics of my existence."_

_Pidge waited, trying to figure out what to say. She watched projected star systems spin slowly around them. "Matt was - is - like that for me, too. School was really lonely and I don't know how I would have gotten through it without him."_

_Cautious, she reached out and slipped her hand in Allura's._

_"I'm grateful to have you in my life, Pidge."_

For the first time she felt her eyes tingle. Pidge let herself cry silently.

"I'm sorry I was jealous. It should not have ended like that. I mean I don't think you were good for him but you were good to us. To me. Hey, remem - do you remember when you got the mice to put Hunks hair into cornrows in his sleep? You were so proud of that prank - and rightly so, you even had Keith laughing. 

"Honestly, I didn't get why you wanted to be a paladin. I still don't. I know Shiro was gone and Voltron had a duty to fulfill, but. You always put duty in front of everything else. But you flew a goddamn _castle_! You commanded us when we needed it, you were essential for winning battles and quick escapes. Why did you give that up to become Lance's replacement and take orders from Keith?" Pidge stopped to catch her breath.

"I wish I could've helped you not be so lonely. I'm so, so sorry for avoiding you these last few - " her fists clenched. "I'm sorry for being so fucking petty while you held the weight of the universe on your shoulders."

She prayed her friend could hear her.

The window opened behind her. She heard someone clamber through. It didn't sound like Matt. Maybe her mom or dad came up to check on her? They never much approved of Pidge and her brother's habit of chilling out on the roof.

Pidge swiped at her tears and cleared her throat. Hopefully there wasn't enough light for the intruder to see her red eyes.

Lance's voice startled her. "Hey, Pidge. Your dad gave me a key."

She glanced to her left at his shoes, the same ones he'd worn every day on the Castle. They were fraying at the seams and the rubber sole beginning to peel away from the fabric at the sides.

"Why are you here?" Pidge tried and failed to not sound grumpy.

He sighed deeply, still standing next to her. He didn't sit down and she refused to look up at him. "I don't want to be alone. It's too much, just...everything."

"Hunk's better at comfort than I am."

"Hunk wants to _talk_ about it." Pidge didn't need to ask what _it_ was. "Shiro wants to _talk_ about it. My whole damn family wants to talk about it, even Silvio and Nadia. I don't want to talk about it. I want to not be alone and not talk about it."

"So why don't you go find Keith?" Pidge muttered.

" _Oh,_ " Lance replied, "our oh-so-much older and wiser leader _also_ wants to _talk_ about it."

Yikes. "Well, I don't want to talk either."

"Fantastic. Let's sit here in companionable silence and grieve inside our own heads." Lance sat down then laid down. Pidge stayed curled up, arms around her knees. Her eyes stayed fixed on the inky horizon line. It was raw; they were two cranky, open wounds side by side trying desperately to heal. Tension lay so thick between them that she could almost taste it in the air. Pidge found it strange that Lance wanted no comfort, but...she understood. One can only hear so many _I'm sorry_ 's and other well-meant platitudes before screaming.

A moment passed - it could have been seconds or an hour or five minutes - and Pidge blinked against her stinging eyes one too many times. The darkness blurred from tears welling up so she scrunched her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry in front of Lance. The tears came anyway. They squirmed past her eyelids and slid down her cheeks. Her lungs shuddered every time she breathed.

Lance must have heard the ragged breaths, or seen her body shaking. Pidge started at his hand on her upper arm. "Pidge, come here. Lie down."

After God only knew how many lost hours of sleep, Pidge could only acquiesce. She settled next to him slightly on her side, facing away from him. The roof tiles dug into her shoulder but she was determined to have some semblance of privacy. Lance pulled her against him, sliding one arm under her neck and resting his other hand on her waist, where his thumb rubbed back and forth to soothe her; the leaking dam broke completely. Pidge sobbed.

She _hated_ the electricity his touch arced through her. 

But Lance was here with her, wasn't he? He sought out her company instead of any of his far more tactful friends or family. That had to mean something. She didn't care if he wanted her as long as he trusted her.

Unbidden, a picture of Allura popped into her head. She was winking dramatically at Pidge, teasing her about something. She could imagine - in another life - that Allura'd smirk at Pidge and prod her for information about her little _cuddle session_ with the Blue Paladin. It was enough to make Pidge's head hurt and stomach twist into a knot.

"I miss her," she murmured. She felt him tense. "That's all I'm gonna say. But...Lance?"

"Yeah?" His voice was soft next to her ear.

"Thank you."

He squeezed her hip, where his hand rested. "Any time."


End file.
